The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby
merry life too, children, if it were not for those horrid men."
"What are men?" asked Tom; but somehow he seemed to know before he
asked.
"Two-legged things, eft: and, now I come to look at you, they are
actually something like you, if you had not a tail" (she was determined
that Tom should have a tail), "only a great deal bigger, worse luck for
us; and they catch the fish with hooks and lines, which get into our
feet sometimes, and set pots along the rocks to catch lobsters. They
speared my poor dear husband as he went out to find something for me to
eat. I was laid up among the crags then, and we were very low in the
world, for the sea was so rough that no fish would come in shore. But
they speared him, poor fellow, and I saw them carrying him away upon a
pole. Ah, he lost his life for your sakes, my children, poor dear
obedient creature that he was."
And the otter grew so sentimental (for otters can be very sentimental
when they choose, like a good many people who are both cruel and greedy,
and no good to anybody at all) that she sailed solemnly away down the
burn, and Tom saw her no more for that time. And lucky it was for her
that she did so; for no sooner was she gone, than down the bank came
seven little rough terrier dogs, snuffing and yapping, and grubbing and
splashing, in full cry after the otter. Tom hid among the water-lilies
till they were gone; for he could not guess that they were the
water-fairies come to help him.
But he could not help thinking of what the otter had said about the
great river and the broad sea. And, as he thought, he longed to go and
see them. He could not tell why; but the more he thought, the more he
grew discontented with the narrow little stream in which he lived, and
all his companions there; and wanted to get out into the wide wide
world, and enjoy all the wonderful sights of which he was sure it was
full.
And once he set off to go down the stream. But the stream was very low;
and when he came to the shallows he could not keep under water, for
there was no water left to keep under. So the sun burned his back and
made him sick; and he went back again and lay quiet in the pool for a
whole week more.
And then, on the evening of a very hot day, he saw a sight.
He had been very stupid all day, and so had the trout; for they would
not move an inch to take a fly, though there were thousands on the
water, but lay dozing at the bottom under the shade of the stones; and
Tom lay dozing too, and was glad to cuddle their smooth cool sides, for
the water was quite warm and unpleasant.
But toward evening it grew suddenly dark, and Tom looked up and saw a
blanket of black clouds lying right across the valley above his head,
resting on the crags right and left. He felt not quite frightened, but
very still; for everything was still. There was not a whisper of wind,
nor a chirp of a bird to be heard; and next a few great drops of rain
fell plop into the water, and one hit Tom on the nose, and made him pop
his head down quickly enough.
And then the thunder roared, and the lightning flashed, and leapt across
Vendale and back again, from cloud to cloud, and cliff to cliff, till
the very rocks in the stream seemed to shake: and Tom looked up at it
through the water, and thought it the finest thing he ever saw in his
life.
But out of the water he dared not put his head; for the rain came down
by bucketsful, and the hail hammered like shot on the stream, and
churned it into foam; and soon the stream rose, and rushed down, higher
and higher, and fouler and fouler, full of beetles, and sticks; and
straws, and worms, and addle-eggs, and wood-lice, and leeches, and odds
and ends, and omnium-gatherums, and this, that, and the other, enough to
fill nine museums.
Tom could hardly stand against the stream, and hid behind a rock. But
the trout did not; for out they rushed from among the stones, and began
gobbling the beetles and leeches in the most greedy and quarrelsome way,
and swimming about with great worms hanging out of their mouths, tugging
and kicking to get them away from each other.
And now, by the flashes of the lightning, Tom saw a new sight--all the
bottom of the stream alive with great eels, turning and twisting along,
all down stream and away. They had been hiding for weeks past in the
cracks of the rocks, and in burrows in the mud; and Tom had hardly ever
seen them, except now and then at night: but now they were all out, and
went hurrying past him so fiercely and wildly that he was quite
frightened. And as they hurried past he could hear them say to each
other, "We must run, we must run. What a jolly thunderstorm! Down to the
sea, down to the sea!"
And then the otter came by with all her brood, twining and sweeping
along as fast as the eels themselves; and she spied Tom as she came by,
and said:
"Now is your time, eft, if you want to see the world. Come along,
children, never mind those nasty eels: we shall breakfast on salmon
to-morrow. Down to the sea, down to the sea!"
Then came a flash brighter than all the rest, and by the light of it--in
the thousandth part of a second they were gone again--but he had seen
them, he was certain of it--Three beautiful little white girls, with
their arms twined round each other's necks, floating down the torrent,
as they sang, "Down to the sea, down to the sea!"
"Oh stay! Wait for me!" cried Tom; but they were gone: yet he could hear
their voices clear and sweet through the roar of thunder and water and
wind, singing as they died away, "Down to the sea!"
"Down to the sea?" said Tom; "everything is going to the sea, and I will
go too. Good-bye, trout." But the trout were so busy gobbling worms that
they never turned to answer him; so that Tom was spared the pain of
bidding them farewell.
And now, down the rushing stream, guided by the bright flashes of the
storm; past tall birch-fringed rocks, which shone out one moment as
clear as day, and the next were dark as night; past dark hovers under
swirling banks, from which great trout rushed out on Tom, thinking him
to be good to eat, and turned back sulkily, for the fairies sent them
home again with a tremendous scolding, for daring to meddle with a
water-baby; on through narrow strids and roaring cataracts, where Tom
was deafened and blinded for a moment by the rushing waters; along deep
reaches, where the white water-lilies tossed and flapped beneath the
wind and hail; past sleeping villages; under dark bridge-arches, and
away and away to the sea. And Tom could not stop, and did not care to
stop; he would see the great world below, and the salmon, and the
breakers, and the wide wide sea.
And when the daylight came, Tom found himself out in the salmon river.
And what sort of a river was it? Was it like an Irish stream, winding
through the brown bogs, where the wild ducks squatter up from among the
white water-lilies, and the curlews flit to and fro, crying
"Tullie-wheep, mind your sheep"; and Dennis tells you strange stories of
the Peishtamore, the great bogy-snake which lies in the black peat
pools, among the old pine-stems, and puts his head out at night to snap
at the cattle as they come down to drink?--But you must not believe all
that Dennis tells you, mind; for if you ask him:
"Is there a salmon here, do you think, Dennis?"
"Is it salmon, thin, your honour manes? Salmon? Cartloads it is of thim,
thin, an' ridgmens, shouldthering ache out of water, av' ye'd but the
luck to see thim."
Then you fish the pool all over, and never get a rise.
"But there can't be a salmon here, Dennis! and, if you'll but think, if
one had come up last tide, he'd be gone to the higher pools by now."
"Shure thin, and your honour's the thrue fisherman, and understands it
all like a book. Why, ye spake as if ye'd known the wather a thousand
years! As I said, how could there be a fish here at all, just now?"
"But you said just now they were shouldering each other out of water?"
And then Dennis will look up at you with his handsome, sly, soft,
sleepy, good-natured, untrustable, Irish grey eye, and answer with the
prettiest smile:
"Shure, and didn't I think your honour would like a pleasant answer?"
So you must not trust Dennis, because he is in the habit of giving
pleasant answers: but, instead of being angry with him, you must
remember that he is a poor Paddy, and knows no better; so you must just
burst out laughing; and then he will burst out laughing too, and slave
for you, and trot about after you, and show you good sport if he
can--for he is an affectionate fellow, and as fond of sport as you
are--and if he can't, tell you fibs instead, a hundred an hour; and
wonder all the while why poor ould Ireland does not prosper like England
and Scotland, and some other places, where folk have taken up a
ridiculous fancy that honesty is the best policy.
Or was it like a Welsh salmon river, which is remarkable chiefly (at
least, till this last year) for containing no salmon, as they have been
all poached out by the enlightened peasantry, to prevent the _Cythrawl
Sassenach_ (which means you, my little dear, your kith and kin, and
signifies much the same as the Chinese _Fan Quei_) from coming bothering
into Wales, with good tackle, and ready money, and civilisation, and
common honesty, and other like things of which the Cymry stand in no
need whatsoever?
Or was it such a salmon stream as I trust you will see among the
Hampshire water-meadows before your hairs are grey, under the wise new
fishing-laws?--when Winchester apprentices shall covenant, as they did
three hundred years ago, not to be made to eat salmon more than three
days a week; and fresh-run fish shall be as plentiful under Salisbury
spire as they are in Holly-hole at Christchurch; in the good time
coming, when folks shall see that, of all Heaven's gifts of food, the
one to be protected most carefully is that worthy gentleman salmon, who
is generous enough to go down to the sea weighing five ounces, and to
come back next year weighing five pounds, without having cost the soil
or the state one farthing?
Or was it like a Scotch stream, such as Arthur Clough drew in his
"Bothie":--
_"Where over a ledge of granite
Into a granite bason the amber torrent descended. . . .
Beautiful there for the colour derived from green rocks under;
Beautiful most of all, where beads of foam uprising
Mingle their clouds of white with the delicate hue of the
stillness. . . .
Cliff over cliff for its sides, with rowan and pendant birch
boughs." . . ._
Ah, my little man, when you are a big man, and fish such a stream as
that, you will hardly care, I think, whether she be roaring down in full
spate, like coffee covered with scald cream, while the fish are swirling
at your fly as an oar-blade swirls in a boat-race, or flashing up the
cataract like silver arrows, out of the fiercest of the foam; or
whether the fall be dwindled to a single thread, and the shingle below
be as white and dusty as a turnpike road, while the salmon huddle
together in one dark cloud in the clear amber pool, sleeping away their
time till the rain creeps back again off the sea. You will not care
much, if you have eyes and brains; for you will lay down your rod
contentedly, and drink in at your eyes the beauty of that glorious
place; and listen to the water-ouzel piping on the stones, and watch the
yellow roes come down to drink and look up at you with their great soft
trustful eyes, as much as to say, "You could not have the heart to shoot
at us?" And then, if you have sense, you will turn and talk to the great
giant of a gilly who lies basking on the stone beside you. He will tell